The Melty Trader Joe's Sliced Cheese That Instantly Upgrades Roast Vegetables

Roast veggies may not be the most exciting part of the meal, but there are definitely ways you can zhuzh them up. After all, who says you can't make a nice green been casserole topped with crunchy Funyuns, just for the heck of it? Or even better, melt some cheese over your vegetables — especially if that cheese is Trader Joe's Raclette sliced cheese, which goes wonderfully with just about everything, including veggies.

Here's what you're gonna do: take a few slices of that lovely cheese from TJ's, melt it over a bit of heat, then pour it over whatever vegetables you have on hand. Potatoes? Broccoli? Cauliflower? All of these could benefit from a decadent smothering of molten cheese, giving you the creamy, funky flavors of fondue without the need for special equipment — or those fancy little dipping skewers. (Raclette may be a Swiss cheese that's different from fondue, but it can be used in similarly cozy ways.)

So what is Raclette, exactly? Well, it's the name of an Alpine cheese made in Switzerland, but it's also the name of a kind of dish that goes with the cheese. The cheese itself is creamy, melty, and slightly nutty, not altogether different from similar Swiss cheeses like Gruyere and Emmental (both of which are excellent cheeses for French onion soup); the dish is part of a long heritage of communal cheese presentations, similar to fondue. (The name Raclette comes from the French word "racler", or "to scrape," with the idea being that you can scrape the cheese over whatever it is you want to eat.)

If this all sounds like a bit of a to-do for a simple, nourishing dish, that's where those cheese slices from Trader Joe's come in handy. If you want to make a production out of it, by all means melt your cheese and make it nice for TikTok. But if you just want to toss a few slices over your asparagus and put it under the broiler for a few minutes, you can do that, too. There's no wrong way to get cheesy with it, is there?